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The home of Celtic PodcastsSat, 19 Jan 2019 08:00:18 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.339761197Soul Sucking Saturdayhttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/soul-sucking-saturday/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/soul-sucking-saturday/#respondSat, 19 Jan 2019 08:00:18 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11183As someone who has a young daughter, I recently watched Tangled for the first time. In that Disney movie, we...]]>

As someone who has a young daughter, I recently watched Tangled for the first time. In that Disney movie, we have an old woman who seems to survive by sucking on the soul of first a magical flower and later the daughter of King and Queen of the land. She’s not the first character like this I’ve come across, I seem to remember similar storylines in everything from Stardust to American Gods – soul sucking seems to be quite a common trope.

We have one of these in Scottish Football too, and they currently go by the name of Airdrieonians.

In the context of Celtic, the name conjures up thoughts Pierre Van Hooijdonk ending a six year wait for a trophy, or for older readers it might be the retirement of the legendary Billy McNeill. Both games were victorious Scottish Cup final wins over a team called Airdrieonians.

Not this one though.

The team we faced in those two finals twenty years apart were liquidated in 2002, three years after we played them for the last time in another Scottish Cup match in January 1999. Their liquidation was set in motion two years earlier when the then Rangers chairman David Murray pushed for them to pay up some debt elsewhere in his business empire. That sent them into administration, from which they were never able to recover. Despite finishing runners up in the second tier, Airdrieonians were no more.

But they weren’t the only club in trouble that season. Local businessman Jim Ballantyne, having failed to create a new Airdrie United club as the SFL went with introducing Gretna into the league instead, pounced on a badly struggling Clydebank and bought them over. He then moved them to Airdrie, rebranded them as Airdrie United and continued on in Scotland’s third tier.

Clydebank were just the first club whose soul Airdrie United were able to use to their own benefit. In 2008, Airdrie United lost the promotion playoffs to Clyde and were supposed to stay in the third tier. However, the demise of Gretna meant a space opened up in the second tier, which was granted to the losing finalists. Having gone up by good fortune in 2008, this continued the following season when they again lost the playoff final to Ayr United. But this time it was administration for Livingston that sent them tumbling down to the bottom tier and offered Airdrie United a reprieve.

As if twice wasn’t enough, they again lost the playoff final in 2012, however with the death of Rangers meaning Dundee took their place in the top tier, there was once again an extra space in the second tier which went to Airdrie United! They didn’t last long though, and went straight back down again in 2013.

But by this point in time, the attitude in Scotland had changed. For a decade, Airdrie United has been accepted as a new Airdrie team and nothing to do with the old one. They didn’t use the same name, and although the fans accepted that they were some kind of continuation of the old club’s traditions, everyone could very easily understand that they were a new club.

But then we had to start convincing people that actually clubs and companies are different things and not linked so that clubs can survive liquidation when companies don’t and honestly son it’s the same goldfish that was there before you went to school and never mind the orange thing I’ve tried to flush down the toilet.

So in 2013, Airdrie United were suddenly allowed to be renamed to Airdrieonians, using the same badge that had been in use until 2002. And with that, confusion reigns today to the point that many people think we haven’t played this Airdrie since that Scottish Cup match in 1999 whereas in actual fact we haven’t played this team in a competitive match since a 5-0 Scottish Cup win at Firhill in 1997 when they were then known as Clydebank.

Technically a Celtic XI has faced Airdrie United a couple of times since then, most recently at Firhill in the summer of 2012 in the Arr Craib Cup, but given that wasn’t the first team it’s difficult to count these – even if I was there to witness it!

I still want to know why there’s a club in the Lowland League that go by Gretna 2008. Surely they’re just Gretna by this same logic? Or are they at least the one team in Scotland that can admit the truth about being a new club based on the old one instead of pretending they’re the same club?

We go into this match with a few monkeys on our back. First, we didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory before the break. An awful performance at Ibrox where the scoreline flattered us, the media then bombarding us with stories about the abuse that referee John Beaton has taken due to his utterly inept performance that day, all in a month where we seem to be building either for the short term with loan signings until the summer or bringing in projects…

I’m just glad to be getting back to the football on the field to be honest.

There is one other monkey on our back though. The one of history being against us. The one that says no Celtic team has ever won the Scottish Cup three years in a row. I’ve gone over this previously, including my belief that we cursed ourselves in 1909 when we tried to chase money from replays and ended up with a riot that saw the cup withheld in a year when we were trying to win it for a third successive time. Since then the closest we’ve come to it was losing the penalty shootout to Aberdeen in 1990.

Indeed, the last time we had two successive Scottish Cups, our attempt to win it for a third time was cut dramatically short after lower league Clyde beat Gordon Strachan’s side on the day Roy Keane made his debut. Du Wei want to talk any more about that game? Not really.

We’ll have to do better than that this time, and with the game taking place at Celtic Park and live on Premier Sports then we’ll be expected to get off to a good start. This Airdrie are mid-table in Scotland’s third tier and still in the hunt for the playoffs – which they historically go on to lose and then benefit from anyway of course.

We, on the other hand, are League Cup holders and top flight leaders. Expectation is always high, especially at home, and so we’ll be on a hiding to nothing unless we issue a good hammering. Even a narrow win that sees us into the next round will be seen as a shock and some kind of moral victory for our opponents. That’s just the way it is with cup football, and no one really remembers the early rounds unless something bad happens anyway.

So lets ensure we do the job professionally. This month has already had enough soul sucking as far as I’m concerned, we don’t want any more of that from the Succubus of Scottish Football.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/soul-sucking-saturday/feed/011183Going For Victory Fivehttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/going-for-victory-five/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/going-for-victory-five/#respondSat, 29 Dec 2018 08:00:24 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11179So here we are, the final game of 2018. Between the second half of last season and the first half...]]>

So here we are, the final game of 2018.

Between the second half of last season and the first half of this season we’ve somehow managed to play no fewer than sixty nine games up to this point.

We’ve won the league title for a seventh consecutive time, we’ve won the Scottish Cup to complete an unprecedented Scottish domestic double treble, we’ve failed to reach the Champions League group stages for a third consecutive time but we did get to the Europa League group stages and qualified for the last thirty two, and we’ve won the League Cup for the third year in a row – meaning that Brendan Rodgers has picked up all seven of the domestic trophies in his time at Celtic, matching the Scottish record.

Eight in a row is still very much on too, both in consecutive domestic trophies and in league titles, as we currently sit three points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership with a game in hand over everyone except St Johnstone – whom we play at Celtic Park in January to catch up.

But today we have a chance to extend that even further, as we look to go to Ibrox and win for a fifth consecutive time.

Rangers are in their third season as a top flight team, and although they’ve managed to pick up a draw at Celtic Park in each of the previous two seasons, their home form against us hasn’t been nearly as good.

Our first visit there on Hogmanay in 2016 saw Celtic come from behind to win 2-1, while the game later that season was a far more convincing 5-1 thrashing – the second time we had beaten them by that scoreline that season. Last season’s first visit was a 2-0 win for Celtic, but the second visit to Ibrox was a far trickier affair. Twice Celtic had to come from behind to level the game, and when we were reduced to ten men you wouldn’t really have thought that it would be us that would get the winner. But that’s exactly what happened as the ten men of Celtic won 3-2.

One interesting fact about this is that while this is our fifth trip there to face, it will be a fourth different manager in charge! Mark Warburton was in charge for the Hogmanay game, while Pedro Caixinha was in charge for the 5-1 and 2-0 games. Graeme Murty was in interim charge for the 3-2 win, and now it’s Steven Gerrard’s side that we’ll look to beat.

Gerrard’s first game against Celtic was a very one-sided affair, with a 1-0 scoreline in Celtic’s favour very flattering for a Rangers side whose best player by far was goalkeeper Allan McGregor. Second best for Rangers that day was probably the woodwork, since Celtic hit that no fewer than four times.

That 1-0 win was Gerrard’s first defeat in charge at Ibrox, but there have been further defeats away to Livingston, Spartak Moscow and Rapid Vienna, as well as back-to-back defeats to Aberdeen in Glasgow. The first of those came in the League Cup semi final to set up our meeting with the Dons in the final at the start of this month, while the latter was Rangers only defeat at Ibrox so far this season just a few days after we lifted that League Cup.

Hopefully Rangers second defeat at Ibrox, just like their first, comes just a few days after us beating Aberdeen!

Wednesday’s game at Pittodrie had everything. Scott Sinclair’s early goal was a great start, but Emilio Izaguirre’s attempted block of the Niall McGinn cross led to a penalty you rarely see given in Scottish football. Most referees will let a challenge go if a player has managed to get the cross or shot away, just look at what happened to Kieran Tierney at Murrayfield when Willie Collum let that one go, but this time Izzy was punished and Aberdeen levelled from the spot.

McGinn was later lucky to escape a red card for having a two footed studs up over the ball challenge, and no one is going to convince me that Willie Collum was switched on enough to give McGinn the benefit of the doubt because he slipped!

Yes, it was the same referee on Wednesday as it was at Murrayfield. Once more our referees prove that, far from being consistent with each other, they can’t even be consistent with themselves.

We then had Aberdeen defending deep with us not having much quality to break them down until the introduction of Odsonne Edouard. His perfectly weighted pass let James Forrest get in behind and find Sinclair for his second goal. Just when you thought that might be it, Graeme Shinnie used his springboard to execute a triple pike and landed with very little splash to score the perfect 6.0 from all the judges, except Willie Collum who instead gave the penalty which Aberdeen duly scored again.

But Edouard wasn’t done. He scored another, reacting quickest to a mix up in the Aberdeen defence to very cleverly dink the ball past Joe Lewis, and then he quickly assisted with a fourth by completely ignoring a Shay Logan challenge and his shirt being pulled by another defender to give Sinclair his hat trick. Even then there was still time for Aberdeen to pull another goal back from a corner before an attempted last second overhead kick ended up on the beach.

There have been some real Boxing Day or St Stephen’s Day classics over the years and this one will probably be remembered up there with the best of them now. But the important thing was to get the win in a season where our away form hasn’t been that great. It became especially important when it turned out Hibernian were to get a point from Ibrox and ensure the gap ahead of today’s game is three points rather than one.

Those results mean that technically we could lose today and still be top of the league going into the winter break if it’s only a narrow defeat, but let’s not think too much about that! We wouldn’t want to give them any encouragement or have to listen to how they are coming all through the break.

Rangers will definitely be thinking about it though. They’ve never beaten us in ninety minutes, their only victory over us came in a penalty shootout at Hampden in the Scottish Cup semi final in 2016.

They’ll be thinking about how they twice led the game at Ibrox last time, and perhaps they’ll be thinking that they should have at least got a draw in it had Alfredo Morelos not missed a sitter.

He might be the top goalscorer in the Premiership, but he’s yet to score against Celtic, a scoring record that might compare him with Kris Boyd – although even he managed one goal against us at Ibrox.

For all the signings and the debt they are continuing to go into in an ever desperate attempt to stop us, the two players keeping Rangers near the top of the league are the Caixinha signings of Morelos and Daniel Candeias. Keep those two out of today’s game and we’ll very probably keep Rangers from troubling us.

Gerrard can’t even get credit for the other signing that is making the difference this season. Allan McGregor’s return to Ibrox was in place before he was!

Win today and we could knock Rangers back down to third place if Kilmarnock win at home to St Mirren, or at the very least we’ll be six points ahead of second spot with a game in hand. That would be a great position to be in for the second half of the season, one that hopefully we’ll go into stronger than we are now.

It’s been a long month with so many games to play and quite a few issues throughout the squad to deal with. But despite that, we go into today’s game in a relatively strong position. We should hopefully have our first choice back four available, though Kieran Tierney is still a real doubt.

There’s no Tom Rogic in midfield, but there’s certainly enough strength in depth there with Scott Brown, Olivier Ntcham, Callum McGregor and Ryan Christie all available. James Forrest has been quiet of late, but a confident Scott Sinclair coming off the back of a hat trick can only be good for us. And of course the brilliance of Edouard was obvious for all to see at Pittodrie. Hopefully he can thrive once more at Ibrox just as he did when he got that winner in the 3-2 game last season.

One last game of the year. Let’s make it a great one.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/going-for-victory-five/feed/011179The Losing Finalist Boosthttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-losing-finalist-boost/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-losing-finalist-boost/#respondWed, 26 Dec 2018 08:00:32 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11175December seems to be quite a crucial time of the football calendar for us. Not only do we end playing...]]>

December seems to be quite a crucial time of the football calendar for us. Not only do we end playing a large portion of our season in this single month, but this season it has also thrown up visits to the three nearest challengers in the league last season and a visit to the team we beat in both cup finals.

The bad news is that the most difficult two have yet to come. Not only were they second and third last season, but they’re second and third right now too!

The worse news is that the visits to Motherwell and Hibernian didn’t exactly end well for us! A draw at Fir Park and a defeat at Easter Road is not exactly the kind of away form we would hope for ahead of these two crucial games.

First up, it’s our trip to Pittodrie. So far this season we’ve beaten Aberdeen 1-0 on two separate occasions, but both of those came in Glasgow. The first was a bit of brilliant thinking from Scott Sinclair in the league game at Celtic Park, and the second was Ryan Christie’s League Cup winner at Hampden.

Both of those games were very tight affairs where, although we were the better team, we couldn’t really find our way through them. I’m not sure I would expect the same again today. With home advantage coupled with them having far better form than either time we’ve played them previously and us having a distinctly average away form, it may not be the same result this time.

Aberdeen didn’t have the best starts to the season and were languishing in the bottom half of the table at the start of this month. Although they made it to the League Cup final, beating close rivals in the process, that form didn’t really translate into the league until they kicked on from a fighting if ultimately fruitless performance against us.

Immediately after that they went to Ibrox and won, and although they they lost at home to St Johnstone – then the form team in the league – they came from behind to beat Livingston with a late overhead kick winner.

Or “did a Samaras” as it might otherwise be known.

Wins against St Mirren and Dundee, the two teams at the bottom of the table, might not seem quite as impressive. But then we couldn’t win in Paisley and they did pump Dundee after they seemed to be getting their act together.

At the weekend there, they beat Hearts 2-0 at Pittodrie to temporarily move into second spot, though they dropped back to third the following day after the game at McDiarmid Park was completed.

Should they win today, they’ll draw level on points with us albeit having played a game more. That’s a decent turnaround for them this month, especially when you consider they’ve had just as many games to play in it as we have and have done it without Gary Mackay-Steven who had only now recovered from the head knock he got in the final.

One reason for it appears to be the sudden form of Sam Cosgrove, a player who had barely scored a goal for anyone now has six in his last four games. Aberdeen seem to have switched to playing two up front and it’s working well for them, although they have a history of changing tactics when they play us. It remains to be seen if they’ll do it again today.

The good news for Celtic is that we should be able to welcome back a few players of our own. Ryan Christie came off the bench on Saturday, while Dedryck Boyata, Kieran Tierney, Mikael Lustig and Odsonne Edouard are also fit again. Tom Rogic, so often a thorn in the side of Aberdeen, can also play today before heading off on international duty.

But then again, what about Mikey Johnston? Having got his first goal for the club last midweek he added two more at the weekend and is earning praises from all quarters. Can he be dropped back out of the team when he’s in this kind of form? If you want players to step up and take their chances when they are presented then you have to be prepared to reward them when they do. The same could be said for Anthony Ralston, who also found himself on the scoresheet last midweek and who has put in two solid performances at right back this past week.

It’s the kind of problem that managers like to have, players in form and putting themselves in a position where you almost have to pick them in your starting eleven.

Almost. Like I said, we have two very tough away games to play now and we want our best and most trusted players in form for them both. Whether that is or isn’t these players, that’s up to Brendan Rodgers to decide.

Our away form has to get better quickly or we’ll risk losing out on eight in a row altogether. But Celtic under Rodgers have almost always risen to the occasion when necessary. Do that again this week and we’ll go a long way to putting everything right for ourselves again.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-losing-finalist-boost/feed/011175The Pressure of Congestionhttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-pressure-of-congestion/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-pressure-of-congestion/#respondSat, 22 Dec 2018 08:00:47 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11172There are far too many games in football these days. It’s not the first time I’ve said this. Back in...]]>

There are far too many games in football these days.

It’s not the first time I’ve said this. Back in the summer I pointed out that the Lisbon Lions played as many games to get to Lisbon as the current Celtic team played just to get to the group stages.

We’re currently in the busiest period of the season. Traditionally the festive period was always a busy one where games are crammed into time that really should be kept free for families to be together but actually people are glad of the distraction after a while! But in recent years, the whole of December has been crammed with games.

This was a World Cup year as well, so we didn’t get Dedryck Boyata back from Russia until we were well into those European qualifiers – although the less said about what happened next, the better. Belgium finished third, so he was the last to return from a World Cup that also featured Mikael Lustig, Cristian Gamboa and Tom Rogic.

Now we’re hearing that Rogic won’t even get the winter break as Australia have demanded his release for the Asian Cup that takes place in January. Unfortunately for us, that release is demanded after our Boxing Day fixture away to Aberdeen and not after our final game before the break!

By the time the full time whistle blows at Ibrox, Celtic will have played no fewer than 70 games in 2018. That’s a crazy amount of fixtures to fulfill around international tournaments where countries get to take away a significant number of our players. It’s the price of being a successful club, the players are going to go play for their country too.

Something surely has to give soon though? These players are top athletes, but they’re going to keep burning out if something doesn’t let up.

And it’s not just them either. I dread to think how much it would have cost to go to every single Celtic game this season. The ticket prices alone can be eye watering at times, never mind the cost of fuel for cars and buses and trains and flights depending on where Celtic are playing and where the fans are coming from.

It’s not unusual to see attendances drop off at this time of year, given the additional strain on money and time for people trying to organise their Christmas presents and dinners and time to see family members for the one time of the year they actually get to do so.

With so many games, and so many demands on the players, long gone are the days of a tried and tested starting eleven for every game. A good squad is needed if you’re to keep up with the pressure of trying to win cups and league titles. Tiredness and injuries take their toll, and we’ve been seeing that all too frequently lately.

The most recent worry from Wednesday night’s match was the injury to Odsonne Edouard. The minute Moussa Dembele was sold to Lyon at the end of the summer transfer window, we were taking a gamble with only having two recognised strikers available. Leigh Griffiths was in and out of the squad due to injury and when it was announced he had to take a step back from football altogether we were left with just Edouard.

It wasn’t a good position for him to be in, and it was pretty obvious that he was looking very tired in some of our more recent games. He still managed to cause all sorts of mayhem in the Motherwell defence before he was forced off with a thigh injury though, so you can’t say he hasn’t been contributing.

Thankfully it seems that injury isn’t quite as bad as it could have been and he may well be back for the games next week, but it does mean we go into today’s game against Dundee with no fit striker available.

So what options do we have? It won’t be the first time we’ve played without a striker, but more often than not I seem to remember Boyata being the man to come up with the only goal of the game. We’ve tried Scott Sinclair and James Forrest, but it never seems to get the best out of them. Ryan Christie was tried up there too earlier in the season, and although he should thankfully return today it seems like a waste of his abilities to put him up there too. We’ve been getting the best out of him in midfield before he was injured against Salzburg, I’m not sure we would want to change that if it can be avoided.

What about Mikey Johnston? He finally got his first senior goal in midweek, so maybe it’s the beginning of the next stage of his Celtic career. Could he do the job against Dundee today? Perhaps.

Or maybe we can get away without one? We’d miss the movement of a striker and the holes that can create in defences, but then if Dundee play like they did when we visited Dens Park earlier this season – or even like they did against Aberdeen on Tuesday night – then perhaps those holes will be there anyway.

Dundee have certainly improved since Jim McIntyre replaced Neil McCann as Dundee manager, but they still have a lot of work to do if they’re to avoid relegation or the playoff at the end of the season. As with most teams in their position, they won’t be expecting anything today but sometimes that can make all the difference. There’s no pressure, they come to defend and to frustrate and maybe to nick something. If they don’t? Well, its teams like St Mirren and Hamilton they need to be beating, not Celtic.

The pressure is all on us. We went back to the top of the table in midweek, a position that has changed hands after almost every game lately. Of the three games remaining before the break, it’s pretty clear this is the easiest one on paper. We should be winning this comfortably, and going into the two difficult trips next week full of confidence.

But games are played on grass, not paper. And while we probably will win today, nobody watches football for the probability factor. Hopefully today we’re watching for the beautiful football Celtic are playing and not getting some shock result that football so often throws up.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-pressure-of-congestion/feed/011172Quick Fire Motherwellhttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/quick-fire-motherwell/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/quick-fire-motherwell/#respondWed, 19 Dec 2018 08:00:50 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11169From a neutral perspective, this is a terrific season of Scottish football. The team at the top keeps changing, there...]]>

From a neutral perspective, this is a terrific season of Scottish football. The team at the top keeps changing, there are only eight points separating the top eight teams – not bad for a league of only twelve – and we’ve seen nothing to suggest that this scenario is going to change any time soon.

But I doubt there are many neutrals reading this blog.

Sunday’s visit to Easter Road was pretty poor from a Celtic perspective. Right from the kick off, Hibernian just looked like the better team. They got their tactics right where we didn’t, the formation worked better, their players looked more up for it than ours did, it was very disappointing.

Not for the first time away from home this season.

Having lost at Tynecastle, Rugby Park and now Easter Road, added to draws in Motherwell, Livingston and Paisley, our away from is mid-table at best. This is definitely something that we have to improve next week given we visit the teams that finished second and third last season in back to back games.

But this week it’s all about picking up points at home.

First up is one of our catch up games against Motherwell. That’s the fun thing about winning the League Cup and playing in Europe, you end up with a fixture congestion that means you play the same team in the league twice in quick succession.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that the referee did his best to ensure Motherwell got a share of the points. Yes, he awarded us a penalty but it’s hard to deny a stonewaller like the challenge on Ryan Christie that night. Fortunately for the referee, we missed that penalty and so him ruling out a perfectly good second goal from Filip Benkovic as well as allowing Cristian Gamboa to be barged out of the way in mid-air in the build up to Motherwell’s equaliser meant it was two more dropped points in a game that we should have won comfortably.

Then again, maybe we should have done more ourselves to win the game. We could have scored the penalty, but that seems to be something of a struggle for us since it was the second of three missed penalties in a row this month. We probably could have taken more chances than we did throughout the game too, so it’s not just poor refereeing to be blamed. It’s not like we can do anything about that, it’s been around far longer than most of us have!

If our away form has been disappointing far too often, our home form has been terrific. Twice we’ve put five past the team who were top of the league at the time, and we’ve won every home league game so far. Indeed, the defeat last week to Salzburg was the first game we’ve lost at Celtic Park this season, with the only other negative being the draw against AEK Athens that ultimately saw us drop into the Europa League.

Motherwell, for a long time, were the last team to beat us at Celtic Park exactly three years ago today. That claim only ended when Aberdeen won on the last day of last season.

Motherwell are in a very odd position in the league at the moment. While the top four are separated by just a point, and the top eight are just eight points apart, Motherwell find themselves another eight points behind that but are in ninth. They’re five points clear of Hamilton in tenth, and a full nine points clear of the bottom two. They won’t declare themselves safe from relegation, but they don’t really seem likely to be dragged into that. Neither do they seem likely to be aiming for the top six at this point either!

But that could all change very quickly if they can get a run together. And that might well be the problem Motherwell have so far this season, they’ve been very inconsistent. One week they can thump an Aberdeen team that seemed to be finding their form, the next they can lose to Livingston, then they’ll draw against Celtic. They’re picking up points, but not enough to mount a serious challenge on the teams above them.

The trouble for us is that we’re looking tired. We have players coming back from injury, notably Dedryck Boyata and Ryan Christie have both been in training, but maybe not until next week. Callum McGregor hasn’t had a rest, Kieran Tierney got one at the weekend, and as for Odsonne Edouard up front on his own… well there’s no other choice there really.

Like Tore Andre Flo before him, a massive price tag comes with a massive expectation. Flo wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t £12m good. It seems very harsh on someone still relatively young and someone who is being asked to play twice a week every week with no prospect of someone else coming in to challenge him or even to give him a rest. But when you’re reported to have cost £9m, mitigating circumstances or not, rightly or wrongly, there are going to be questions asked given it’s so much more than anyone spends in Scotland these days – ourselves included.

But then one of Edouard’s finest games last season came at Celtic Park against Motherwell at the end of a week where we played them three times! He came in and scored a hat trick in a 5-1 win, and that might actually have been the first time he had done anything of significant note for Celtic.

I’d love to see another performance like that, but if Edouard can play his part in a Celtic victory as he has done already many times this season then he’s more than earning his worth in our team as far as I’m concerned. Hopefully we can get him some more help in January.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/quick-fire-motherwell/feed/011169On The Road Challengehttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/on-the-road-challenge/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/on-the-road-challenge/#respondSun, 16 Dec 2018 08:00:37 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11165I’ve had some strange times following Celtic, but Thursday night must be up there with one of the strangest of...]]>

I’ve had some strange times following Celtic, but Thursday night must be up there with one of the strangest of all.

It was a weird day for me where nothing was quite going according to plan. I hate days like that when I know the football is coming up, because it inevitably carries into that like some kind of bad omen.

And so it proved yet again. Timings didn’t feel right, whether it was singing songs or the players themselves. It quickly became clear that we were in trouble when our midfield couldn’t find each other with passes and things that we were trying were quickly seeing possession overturned. The defence seemed practically suicidal at times too.

We lost two players to injuries, which is never a good thing. Especially when the second one was our man of the moment, Ryan Christie. It’s worryingly quiet about his injury, which makes me think that although it’s not a break we won’t be seeing him for a good while now.

Then the goals came. Another disappointingly easy cross and header saw us fall behind, all too often that was how we would concede in Europe this season. But the second goal was just ridiculous. For all Craig Gordon had pulled off some outstanding saves to keep us in the game up to that point, throwing the ball against an opponent just reminds you of the kind of clanger you had seen him have against us in his Hearts days.

This was it, we were going out. People headed for the exits. I pulled out my phone and started checking messages, Twitter…

And while there I tweeted “come on Rosenborg”, knowing full well our only real hope of progress now was for the team with zero points from five games to somehow come from a goal down in Germany. It was a tweet more to illustrate that we were done for the night than in actual hope of it happening.

But soon I heard a roar come from behind me. Then my watch buzzed with the Sky Sports score update – Rosenborg has equalised.

Suddenly the doom and gloom lifted from the stadium. We were still losing, still didn’t look like we had any chance of changing that, especially not with Kristoffer Ajer missing a sitter that is arguably worse then the one I had in that same goal five years ago, but we were going through.

I’m not sure I was able to celebrate and sing like many others in the crowd, I was too busy wondering if Rosenborg could hold on, but it certainly seemed to lift the team. Salzburg may have been sitting back and defending their two goal lead, but suddenly we were creating. Olivier Ntcham finally tested their goalkeeper with a free kick. Filip Benkovic won us a penalty.

Of course, in keeping with the day even the penalty wasn’t quite right and Ntcham had to score the rebound.

But eventually the game ended in Germany. Our game was now meaningless, we were through to the last 32 and it didn’t matter we were about to lose. So when that full time whistle blew we all cheered a 2-1 home defeat.

Well actually, I didn’t. I was too busy laughing at just how surreal this whole thing was. Cheering your own team losing is too weird for me, even if I do understand that we were celebrating the efforts over six matches and not one.

When it comes right down to it, we took nine points from a group with two other champions – one of which made the Europa League semi final last season – and one of the best teams in Germany. It’s been said many times before, this was more of a “Champions” group stage than most Champions League groups.

We now await the draw on Monday to see who we will face after Christmas, the last Scottish team standing in Europe once more.

But there’s no time to reflect, because now we start a tough run of five league matches and the first of three away games at last season’s best of the rest.

With Pittodrie and Ibrox to come before the month ends, it’s funny to think that actually Easter Road might be the hardest of all. Hibernian may have finished fourth behind us and the other two teams, but we tend to win at Pittodrie and Ibrox in recent visits.

Not so Easter Road. We haven’t won there since January 2014! Yes, Hibernian spent a few seasons in the Championship after that, but when they returned to the top flight last season we only took a single point from our two trips there – and even that was mighty close!

We went from 2-0 up to 2-2 on our first visit last season, with Mikael Lustig clearing a potential late winner off the line after a mistake from Craig Gordon. Our other visit there last season was a title clincher is we had won, but instead we slumped to a 2-1 defeat.

When we played Hibernian earlier this season at Celtic Park, it took a terrific performance to beat them 4-2. Both teams had come off 6-0 wins the previous week and were bang in form and so didn’t disappoint.

It’s not quite the case now though. Since that game, Hibernian have slumped down the table and haven’t won at home since that 6-0 victory and that includes draw against the bottom two teams in the league. Meanwhile we’ve gone on to go top – albeit having lost that again yesterday thanks to Kilmarnock’s victory.

But even though we’ve done that, our away form hasn’t been great. It took a while to register an away win in the league this season, and of course our most recent away game was the 1-1 draw at Motherwell.

I have no doubt that Neil Lennon will have his team fired up for the game. They’ve won only once since they last played us and really need something to spark their season again. A good performance and a good result against the champions would do just that, and we’ve seen in pretty much every game against them that Hibernian are a very difficult prospect. Lennon knows how to play against us, and he’ll use every part of that to try and get what they need.

Meanwhile we need to bounce back after Thursday’s defeat with a much better performance and hopefully without missing Christie too much.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/on-the-road-challenge/feed/011165More than words.http://www.hailhailmedia.com/more-than-words/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/more-than-words/#respondThu, 13 Dec 2018 13:01:25 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11159If you’re going to do something, then it’s probably a good idea if you enjoy doing it. There are a...]]>

If you’re going to do something, then it’s probably a good idea if you enjoy doing it. There are a few of us out there who love writing words about Celtic, for example. Some are lucky enough to have it as their full time job, some do it as a hobby but ask for money to do so, whilst some of us just do it because of a love for the club. Obviously, everyone is entitled to read anything they want about their side, regardless of the club they support, there are a lot of great blogs out there that are worth getting torn into.

Imagine if one day, you found out that Chris Davies had started a blog looking at different players, managers, tactics and teams. You’d read it, wouldn’t you? A coach at a top flight club writing a blog though? Surely not.

Ever heard of Rene Maric or Spielverlagerung?

Maric will be sitting in the opposing dugout tonight, as one of the assistants to Salzburg manager, Marco Rose. He’s been widely earmarked as one of Europe’s most progressive coaches and has just signed a contract extension that will keep him at the club based in Wals-Siezenheim until 2021. Nice work if you can get it. His club sit unbeaten at the top of the Austrian Bundesliga after 17 games, a full 14 points clear of LASK Linz in second and 25 ahead of Rapid Vienna. I wonder what they’re up to tonight? Anyway, so what, he happens to be a coach at a football club, no big deal, right? Wrong. He’s 26 years old.

The story of his career to date has attracted interest because it’s a bit of an unconventional way to get into top flight football. As a lot of people out there do, you get involved in coaching after being forced to give up playing the game due to injury. His village wasn’t heavily populated, perhaps a thousand people at most. If football is what you love and you have barely anyone to speak to about it, what do you do? How about starting a blog with some of your mates? With four of them, in 2011, they created Spielverlagerung, not knowing at the time that it would that would lead to something beyond all of their imaginations.

It’s worth a look if you like the analytical and tactical side of the game. Coaches and coaching enthusiasts would read it, and like anyone who writes, you like the validation of people reading and commenting on your stuff. Just a cool hobby for them to have, but then one day, it all began to change. An assistant to Thomas Tuchel, when he was at Mainz, dropped the guys an email one day. Tuchel, now the head coach at PSG, had seen one of their reports on one of their games and was startled at how accurate it was. An invite was extended, and Tuchel picked their brains for hours on everything from different opponents to their more general views on the game. Tuchel ended the meeting by giving them some work to do for him on tactical analysis of opposition sides to scouting, something they worked on for a year. Brendan, if you’re reading, I’m sure that Krys or I could find the time to do something similar!

Fun while it lasted, perhaps that was the end of the excitement of working at the business end of football, due to your words. Not so, word had spread. More work was in the offing. Matthew Benham, owner of Brentford and Midtjylland, renowned fan of sabernomics or the “Moneyball” approach to football got in touch, and had them do some work for him. Next up were Salzburg when Marco Rose was managing the under-18 side. Like Tuchel, he was blown away by the depth of Maric’s analysis. After meeting more than once, discussing tactics and training methods, Maric decided to go for it and asked if he needed an assistant. Ballsy, but successful.

In his first season, Salzburg won the Uefa Youth League in 2016‑17, beating Manchester City and PSG on the way. It wasn’t all quite so harmonious with the first team though, and former Watford manager, Óscar García was given his jotters in 2017. Rose was given the gig and Maric stepped up with him. The opponents tonight reached the Europa League semi‑finals last year.

Salzburg were bounced out of the Champions League at the play-off stage by Red Star Belgrade on away goals. Nil nil away would seem like a good result to take back to Austria, but not if the second leg is going to finish 2-2. Apparently, there were cheers in the dressing room when they were drawn to face RB Leipzig in the Europa League, because the two organisations wanted to be featuring in the last 32 together.

What does this mean for Celtic tonight? Make no mistake, Salzburg will be going for the win and with Maric’s help, they’ll be completely clued up on our squad. It poses some questions? Can we mislead the guy hailed as a tactical expert? Does the captain come back in from the start or do you keep him on the bench to try and close the game out at a later stage? An argument for the midfield could be made for saying that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it? After the recent news, up front takes care of itself, be well soon, young man.

If the point needed tonight is achieved, post Christmas European football will follow, with the draw taking place on December 17th for the last 32. Benfica, Inter, Napoli and Valencia already wait as four of the seeded teams in the next round and will be joined by the winners of the EL group stages. Brugge, Galatasaray, Shakhtar Donetsk and Viktoria Plzen are in the unseeded pot where Celtic want to be, come 10pm BST tonight. Leverkusen and Zürich will make it from Group A. Salzburg, regardless of what happens tonight will join the seeded teams. Old foes Zenit will top Group C and so could be seen again in G40. Slavia Prague or Copenhagen will join them but will not be a potential opponent should we make it. Dinamo Zagreb have already won Group D whilst Fenerbahçe will drop into the unseeded pot as runners up. You’d take Zagreb if you made it, right, nice trip home for Benković and Šimunović? Arsenal look likely to win Group E and Real Betis and AC Milan are fighting it out for top spot in Group F. It’s all to play for in Group G with anyone still having the chance of going through, including Scotland’s newest club. Did I mention that their opponents are 25 points behind Salzburg in their league? Eintracht have won Group H, would you fancy your chances against a side that are two points behind Leipzig in the Bundesliga in fifth? Lazio are already confirmed as dropping into the unseeded pot. Group I could be fun tonight with KRC Genk, Besiktas, Malmö and Sarpsborg 08 all dreaming of being in the pot for the draw on Monday. FK Krasnodar, Sevilla and Standard Liege all have dreams of doing the same tonight . Dynamo Kiev, FC Astana and Rennes are all in the mix for places after the festive season, with the Ukrainian side looking favourite for top spot in Group K. Lastly, in Group L, Chelsea have it won, who’s up for a trip to West London? BATE Borisov and MOL Vidi will fight it out to hopefully join the Hoops in the unseeded pot.

Who said the Europa League was boring? So much to play for and tonight the team needs as much support as possible against a very good side. Maybe Fergus McCann said it best. “Being a Celtic supporter is not always easy, but it is always worthwhile.”

Can we make it? Rene Maric and thousands of Leipzig fans will hope not.

@TheSamMcLeod

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/more-than-words/feed/011159Play For The Win, Take The Drawhttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/play-for-the-win-take-the-draw/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/play-for-the-win-take-the-draw/#respondThu, 13 Dec 2018 08:00:31 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11155Throughout my years of supporting Celtic, I’ve been told one thing over and over with which I vehemently disagree. Nothing...]]>

Throughout my years of supporting Celtic, I’ve been told one thing over and over with which I vehemently disagree.

Nothing beats gubbing Rangers.

Don’t get me wrong, I used to love it when we got one over them. Or preferably more than one. I was as delighted as everyone else when Chris Sutton chipped in a whitewashing winner, I celebrated by falling about when Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink got that late winner on our way to winning three in a row under Gordon Strachan, I even once wrote Star Trek fan fiction and gave two characters the names Burley and Lambert after a certain New Year derby win.

But ever before their demise six years ago I always enjoyed something else even more.

A big European night.

I didn’t get to many Celtic games until the Martin O’Neill years, so it wasn’t really until the UEFA Cup match at home to Bordeaux that I first got to experience You’ll Never Walk Alone properly in person. The half time singing in that match will probably live with me forever, even though I’ve heard it sung louder or emotionally in games since then. Liverpool on the road to Seville and Barcelona after terrorist attacks in Spain earlier that day come specifically to mind.

Knocking Barcelona out of the UEFA Cup in 2004 was possibly the best experience I ever had at a Celtic game. It’s still the best result I’ve seen us get away from home in Europe, the only other time we didn’t lose when I’ve been there was the other game in Barcelona that year!

But it’s a Celtic Park where the big European night really stands out. After Shunsuke Nakamura’s free kick beat Manchester United and sent us through the last sixteen of the Champions League, we probably sang You’ll Never Walk Alone an octave too high! But that was the emotion of the night, coupled with the Artur Boruc penalty save just before the end.

And no one will forget the night Tony Watt’s name reverberated around Europe.

Match day four on this season’s Europa League group campaign brought something new to the table. For the first time, Celtic’s “disco lights” were turned on. For me, the show itself was a little flat, probably more to do with the music choice than the lights to be fair, but what followed was something new. The lights were kept down, and the disco lights did their magic as the stadium sang out You’ll Never Walk Alone.

It immediately became one of my favourite renditions. There was something special about that atmosphere, where the stadium did it’s thing and we did ours.

Then the team put in one of the best performances we’ve seen at home in Europe in a long time. RB Leipzig were “nae mugs” and we still managed to beat them 2-1. It wasn’t the scoreline that impressed, it was the whole performance. We worked hard to earn that win, especially after it looked like we were going to drop points and we roared straight back into the lead.

That victory wasn’t enough to give us a head to head advantage over RB Leipzig, but coupled with home and away victories over Rosenborg and the fact that Red Bull Salzburg have won all of their games so far means we go into this final match three points clear in second place.

Now we just have to avoid defeat against that 100% recording Salzburg team.

Rosenborg are out, we’ll all be very surprised if their game against Leipzig is anything other than a German victory. Given that’s the case, they’ll draw level on points with us if we lose to Salzburg and they’ll overtake us with the better head to head.

It means that we have things in our own hands, but it does also mean there’s a temptation to play it safe and not take any risks. A draw is enough to see us through, but I don’t think anyone wants to see us play for that draw – Brendan Rodgers included. I’d imagine tonight’s mantra will be simple.

Play for the win, take the draw.

For Salzburg, top spot is already secure and they’ll be seeded in the draw for the last 32. They’ll want that 100% record though, and I’m sure their bosses will be desperate to ensure that they do the favour for RB Leipzig. Thankfully they didn’t do them any favours on match day five and so the stitch up never came, but they know they can still help tonight.

At the weekend, Salzburg drew 2-2 away to Flyeralarm Admira. Yes, that’s a real name. That draw is one of only five they’ve had this season, two of which came in Champions League qualifying against Red Star Belgrade and saw them lose on away goals, while the other two came in October away to LASK Linz and at home to Wacker Innsbruck.

Every other game they’ve played this season has been a win. They haven’t actually lost a game since a 4-0 defeat on the last day of last season away to Austria Vienna. Before that, it was the semi final of the Europa League against Marseille!

If Celtic can pull off a win tonight, it will be an amazing result. The fact that Salzburg do concede goals can give us heart, but then Rosenborg scored twice at home on match day four and still lost 5-2. They then played four games without conceding before Saturday’s 2-2 draw.

We also know that in the game in Austria we were giving Salzburg a lot to think about in the first half. We took and early lead through Odsonne Edouard and maybe should have done more to extend that. It all fell apart in the second half and we went on to lose 3-1 in the end, but there was a lot to look at in that game to give us hope for tonight.

The real trick will be keeping Salzburg out at the other end. Red Star Belgrade managed it back in August, and if we can match that tonight then we know we’ll go through regardless of what we do at the other end. Unfortunately we won’t be doing it with the help of Dedryck Boyata. His partnership with Filip Benkovic was looking pretty good until his injuries in the League Cup final, so we’ll need to hope that Jozo Simunovic can fill in there instead. So far it’s looked alright, and indeed it was a misjudgement from Benkovic, not Simunovic, that conceded the penalty on Saturday.

The bigger concern is probably the right back role. Neither Mikael Lustig nor Cristian Gamboa have been particularly impressive in Europe this season unfortunately, but one of them will play tonight and hopefully this is the night we’re reminded of what they can do at this level.

Up top, it will almost certainly be Odsonne Edouard now that Leigh Griffiths has been given time off from football for a while. Leigh has had issues for months now, and the time has finally come that he has to take a step back to deal with those properly. I wish him all the best in doing that, and hope that when he’s ready he can return to the first team and continue adding to his more than a century of goals for the club.

Edouard will now be our sole striker for the remaining six games of the year, and while that will be a difficult and exhausting task we know that the midfield are playing their part in getting goals too. Ryan Christie can’t stop scoring, while James Forrest has again hit double figures for the season. Tom Rogic and Callum McGregor haven’t been finding the net much lately but we know what they’re both capable of, whilst Scott Sinclair got that crucial goal in Trondheim on match day five.

With Olivier Ntcham and even the captain Scott Brown struggling to get back into the team at the expense of those currently first choice, it says a lot for the quality we have in the middle of the park. We’ll need that particularly tonight, but also in the five league games we have in the run up to new year.

Salzburg might be the best team we’ll face this season. Europa League semi finalists last season, they’re in great form this season and will be hoping to do even better this season.

But Celtic Park might be their toughest venue of the season too. In full flow, it’s one of the most intimidating arenas in Europe. RB Leipzig admitted it was too much for them. Salzburg won’t make that mistake, but you can be sure we won’t be making it easy for them to focus. Celtic Park will be rocking with a capacity crowd, all pulling for Celtic to get the result that will see us in that draw for Europe after Christmas.

The poor wee sensitive souls are getting more and more upset at the constant criticism of them from players, managers, fans and the media alike.

All of it absolutely justified.

After Hearts lost at home at the weekend courtesy of an extremely obvious offside decision, Craig Levein revealed that referee chief John Fleming had told him previously that to help out the linesman his teams should hold a defensive line across the 18 yard box.

Well they did, and they still managed to get the decision wrong. Levein says he won’t talk to Fleming any more because what’s the point. Exactly.

Fleming hates any criticism of his referees, and we heard from him earlier in the season when Kilmarnock were complaining about a farcical sending off that didn’t even get overturned because the referee panel refused to go against their colleague.

I’m not sure what is more worrying though. That our referees and their assistants are so bad that even their boss thinks they need lines on the park to try and get decisions right, or that they still managed to get the decision wrong even with the help of a line!

Having legitimately criticised the decision, former referee Steve Conroy then came out to defend the Tynecastle referee Bobby Madden saying that Levein was out of order and he had vein derogatory to his personality.

No, he rightly criticised his abilities as a referee! It wasn’t personal at all! Something Levein has since pointed out himself in response to Conroy.

That decision wasn’t even the most contentious from Sunday. In our game at Hampden, we got a penalty for a ball headed onto an arm that was outside the box. Andrew Dallas, a referee only because of his name and clearly not his abilities, managed to give another penalty for nothing in midweek which again meant Hearts were screwed, this time out of a win as they drew 2-2 in Perth.

Meanwhile, Steven McLean was at Ibrox giving Aberdeen’s Sam Cosgrove a second yellow card for getting to the ball first and then being kicked, then later giving a second yellow card to Alfredo Morelos for a clear karate chop on Graeme Shinnie who – not for the first time in recent days – made a total meal of it.

He also didn’t give Kyle Lafferty a second yellow card for… well, pick one of several incidents actually. Although Aberdeen still won at Ibrox in midweek, this means Dundee will be hosting a team with Lafferty in it but who shouldn’t have any available strikers due to their ongoing indiscipline.

And then there was our game at Fir Park.

I’m not sure when an elbow to the face became only a yellow card and not a straight red, but we saw it at Fir Park as well when Allan Campbell hit Cristian Gamboa. The second yellow card that should have come later on when Campbell clattered Jonny Hayes never did.

We also had a perfectly good goal chopped off for Filip Benkovic having his shirt pulled by Tom Aldred where the referee decided it was Benkovic doing the fouling for pretty much nothing at all, yet somehow Celtic didn’t get a free kick for Danny Johnson barging Gamboa while he was jumping for a ball. The next thing Johnson did was fire the ball into the net, so that decision cost us two points and the chance to go back top of the league.

While all of this was happening, Kilmarnock were beating Livingston to take that top spot. Yes, they’ve played two games more that we have, but there’s no doubt that Kilmarnock deserve to be there.

Since Steve Clarke took over the helm at Rugby Park last season, their turnaround has been remarkable. They were bottom of the league when he started there, and he not only took them up to eventually finish fifth in the league, but they became a real thorn in our sides as well. Indeed, Celtic have yet to beat Kilmarnock under Clarke.

It’s not as if we haven’t played them! Clarke’s first two games in charge saw him get 1-1 draws at both Ibrox and Celtic Park. We then went to Rugby Park in February and lost 1-0 in a game that probably did enough to get Youssouf Mulumbu his move to us in the summer. The penultimate league game of last season was a goalless draw at Celtic Park, and of course they came from behind to beat us 2-1 at Rugby Park earlier this season.

Two draws and two defeats for us against Clarke’s Kilmarnock is probably our worst record against any team under Brendan Rodgers. I certainly can’t think of another Scottish team that’s been so consistently good against us.

We go into this home game off the back of three consecutive performances where we’ve dominated, scored a goal, and not gone on to make it safe by getting the second goal that our play probably merited.

In Trondheim, we got the 1-0 win we needed, but it felt far more nervy than it should have been. In the League Cup final, we wasted several breaks up the park as Aberdeen pushed up but the closest they came to scoring was when Simunovic hit his own bar. On Wednesday night though our luck ran out and the referee let a foul go in the build up to the equaliser. Our perfectly good second goal being ruled out didn’t help, but we did also have a stonewall penalty that we really should have scored.

It’s games like Wednesday where we really need to be better than the referee or it can cost us. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but I’ve heard quotes from Jock Stein about this so it’s hardly new.

I doubt we’ll get away with a fourth game of not being clinical enough. Not against this Kilmarnock side then we haven’t beaten in four attempts. Not with the partnership of Brophy and Stewart returning from injury to immediate effect in recent games.

Win today and we’ll go back top of the league, at least until Sunday when we could possibly lose it on goal difference again. But winning today is the most important aspect, we’re long overdue a win against Kilmarnock.

And besides, if you want to win the league you really have to beat your title rivals in your home games.

Krys (Twitter @krys1888)

]]>http://www.hailhailmedia.com/the-clarke-effect/feed/111105Seventh Heavenhttp://www.hailhailmedia.com/seventh-heaven/
http://www.hailhailmedia.com/seventh-heaven/#respondWed, 05 Dec 2018 08:00:53 +0000http://www.hailhailmedia.com/?p=11102Sometimes it’s good just to take a step back and think about where we are right now. Seven domestic honours...]]>

Sometimes it’s good just to take a step back and think about where we are right now.

Seven domestic honours in a row. A team that hasn’t known cup defeat since losing a penalty shootout more than two and a half years ago. A manager who has won every trophy he has played for in Scotland. It’s absolutely staggering.

I’ve mentioned many times before but I’m of an age where I grew up through the barren years of the 1990s. My earliest football memories involve signing Polish players after being stabbed in the back by one of own, losing to Aberdeen in penalties in a cup final, and Scotland playing at the World Cup in Italy.

No, really, that actually used to happen. I’m serious! I know younger readers might not believe it, but it really did happen back then. Aberdeen really did beat us in a cup final!

That meant that my formative years saw me attend school when Rangers would win everything. That seven in a row that we’ve just equalled happened at the time I was going from primary to secondary school. And my school was full of Rangers fans, so you can imagine I had every single one of their successes rubbed into me.

And why I thanked Craig Brewster in my blog at the weekend.

It’s not as if Celtic were even the team who were likely to stop Rangers winning them. We were never the runner up!

We lost to them in the semi final of the Scottish Cup in 1991/92 and finished third on the league that year. In 1992/93, we lost to Aberdeen in the semi final of the league cup, again finished third in the league, and lost to Falkirk in the Scottish Cup fourth round. The 1993/94 season saw us lose to Rangers in the league cup semi final, finish fourth in the league, and lose to Motherwell in the Scottish Cup third round.

This is why my first football strips were an Italia 90 Scotland jersey and… and an Aberdeen jersey. Anyone by Rangers caused a few confusions back then!

The first trophy I remember Celtic winning is the Tennents Sixes in 1992. Tommy Burns finally ended our six year wait for a trophy with the Scottish Cup in 1995, and that was the first time I could truly remember Celtic winning a major honour. The League Cup final earlier that season that we lost was our first final since we had lost to Rangers in the 1990/91 League Cup final.

Thinking of all of this made me realise that it took me over a decade to see Celtic win seven trophies. From my early memories in late 1989, after the Joe Miller cup final which I don’t remember, the first trophy didn’t come until 1995. Wim Jansen stopping the ten was the third after also picking up the League Cup that season, and Kenny Dalglish supplied the fourth as interim manager.

It took Martin O’Neill winning the treble to take the total I could remember to seven. And yet here is Brendan Rodgers hitting that same total in the lifetime of my daughter who isn’t even two and a half yet. She hasn’t known a world of anything other than Celtic victories!

So with the seventh trophy of the Brendan Rodgers era at Celtic, it’s time to focus once more on winning eight in a row. Not only is it eight league titles in a row, it’s now also eight domestic trophies in a row that we’re going for in the league.

As predicted, we were overtaken at the weekend as Hearts were beaten by a woeful offside decision. We’re now a point off the top spot, although we have played a game less as we were busy winning a trophy – the only one you can win at this time of year. We’re not even half way through the league season yet!

It could change again tonight. There’s a full fixture list to play, and with Aberdeen visiting the league leaders they’ll be keen to bounce back from their defeat on Sunday by beating the team they knocked out in the semi final to get there.

But that’s just something to check on. We have our own concerns as we travel to Fir Park to face Jekyll and Hyde FC.

In the last couple of weeks, Motherwell have thumped Aberdeen 3-0 and lost 2-0 to Livingston. Before the international break they were hammered 7-1 at Ibrox, although a red card and a penalty in that game didn’t really help with that scoreline.

Despite not really seeming to play that badly this season, Motherwell are sitting in ninth place, just one point ahead of Hamilton. If St Mirren and Dundee get their act together they could very easily be dragged into a relegation battle.

So you can imagine they’ll be looking to recapture their form of last season, starting with causing us problems at Fir Park.

On our last visit there in March, we only managed a 0-0 draw. That’s despite Cedric Cipre being sent off towards the end of the first half. Our other trip there last season was also a draw, but it was nearly even worse. A Mikael Lustig own goal looked like it might lose us out long unbeaten record, but thankfully a clumsy foul on Callum McGregor let Scott Sinclair level it late on from the penalty spot.

True, we beat Motherwell in both cup finals last season and also gave them a 5-1 hammering at Celtic Park, but at Fir Park we’ve found it difficult for quite a while. Our last win there was in the invincible treble season, in that memorable 4-3 victory where we came from 2-0 down and 3-2 down to get the late winner through Tom Rogic.

So what can we expect tonight? Well, with a lot of tough games ahead and already a few tough games behind us, we might see a few changes to freshen things up. Scott Brown was back to lift the cup with Mikael Lustig, and Olivier Ntcham is also waiting in the wings. Jozo Simunovic came on for the injured Dedryck Boyata and unfortunately the news is that his hamstring injury will see him out for the next few weeks. That’s a real blow as we could have done with home for not just our crucial Europa League game next midweek but more than just that too!

Leigh Griffiths will also be patiently waiting for his chance to get a start up front while Odsonne Edouard might finally be due a rest. And what of Cup hero Ryan Christie? Can you rest someone in his form? If not, where does Callum McGregor go if we bring in Brown and Ntcham? Out wide go give Scott Sinclair or James Forrest a rest? What about Tom Rogic?

Kieran Tierney might be another to get a rest. We did bring Emilio Izaguirre back for that very reason after all! Fir Park is where Izzy began his Celtic career, but it’s also where he was hooked in the first half of that 4-3 game!

There’s no let up in December, and even though this will be a tough match we have even tougher games to come. Kilmarnock are flying high, we have to get something from Salzburg, a visit to Easter Road is even more difficult than Fir Park when you look at last season’s results… and it won’t stop there. We have to visit Pittodrie and Ibrox too before the month is out!

We have to somehow manage our way through this busy and difficult period without dropping too much and without exhausting our players either. This is where Brendan Rodgers will see the strength or weakness of his squad. Injuries haven’t helped up us, but neither did the summer transfer window. Winning the league cup only papered over that crack, we still need to get to January before we can do anything about it properly.

Let’s hope we can get there without it costing us too much ground in the league. Preferably without it costing us any!